Welcome to my Creative Fridays.I am not the most organized person. In January I went through my daughters’ closets, cleaned them out and tried to make them neat. I put most of their toys in their closets but found that some of the larger items would not fit on the shelves. What to do?I went to IKEA and found these unfinished storage containers. They are quite big – 22 wide, 12 inches high, 13 inches wide. I got out my handy spray paint and went to work. Two coats of off-white paint did the trick. I found three coordinating scrapbook papers and decoupaged them onto the front panels of the containers. I used mod podge. I let it dry and then put the containers together. Now I have a place for all of those big Littlest Petshop houses, Pony castles, and My Twinn Doll tents and accessories. I finished them off by printing out some pictures of Ella and attached the pictures to some scrapbook frames using Gorilla Glue.I added the wheels so she can push the containers around her room while she’s playing or into her sister’s room for play dates. I used Gorilla Glue to attach the wheels to the carts.

Do your kids come home from school and throw their backpacks, boots and coats everywhere? This was my problem for the past 6 years. I had hooks in my long, skinny laundry room but I was always climbing over everyone’s backpacks and boots to do my laundry. I tried to have the kids leave their gear in the garage but it kept trickling into the house.

I really wanted to find a way to make lockers, but couldn’t find a space big enough. I finally came up with a plan. In mylaundry room there was a wide closet with double doors that stored all of my cleaning supplies and vacuum. I moved the cleaning supplies and vacuum to another space and took out the doors of the closet and all of the shelves. We then arched the top of the space so it would look more built in.

I then tried to come up with a plan for the lockers. I looked into custom cabinets, but they were so EXPENSIVE. I fell in love with these lockers from Pottery Barn.

The only problem was they were going to cost me almost $2,000 and they were a little too wide for my space. After searching everywhere, I came upon some similar lockers from JCPenney.com.They ended up costing me $400 with free shipping. So, until I have a budget for custom cabinets, this is my thrifty solution to all of the stuff my kids drag home from school! My lockers are no longer sold, but these are pretty similar and are also a good deal:

And someday, maybe I will be able to create something like these:

{This is my favorite one!}

So how do you organize all of your winter gear?

Have a Thrifty Tuesday!–Jen

PS – if you want a really cute, thrifty purse project — go on over to Quincy Cottage for the idea!